God’s mission in the world is to reconcile all things to God’s self. It’s to return us to one-ness with God and with one another. To engage God’s mission is to live into our Baptismal Covenant by joining God in that reconciling work, whether that be in our faith communities, in relationship with others, or in our neighborhoods.
Jesus taught about the kingdom of God: the prophets’ vision of shalom, where the powerful and the powerless can imagine and enact a just world together. In our time, prophetic voices such as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others used the language of Beloved Community to describe the experience of God’s kingdom in our lives today: moments of reconciliation and joy that break in and rebuke our racial and social divisions. “Beloved Community” was new language in the 1960s for what Christianity has held for almost 2,000 years – the ever-inbreaking-but-as-yet-not-fully-realized Reign of God.
The Way of Love is a rule of life – a set of practices that we can engage in on a daily basis – meant to re-orient us towards God. As we are continually reminded to turn towards God, dwell in scripture and live a life of service, we are set along the track that leads us towards engaging God’s mission by opening our eyes God in us, others and in the world, and creating beloved community by acting on the movements, call and promptings of the Holy Spirit
Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, issued an invitation to “return to the ancient pathways and Rules of Life that followers of Jesus have observed for centuries.” Creating beloved community includes a re-centering of ourselves to be open to where God is calling us. These practices help center and ground us and live into beloved community.